Using FOR XML
As you saw in Exercise 18.2, you can append FOR XML AUTO to the end of a SELECT statement in order to cause the result to be returned as an XML document fragment. Transact-SQL's FOR XML syntax is much richer than this, though—it supports several options that extend its usefulness in numerous ways. In this section, we'll discuss a few of these and work through examples that illustrate them.
SELECT…FOR XML (Server-Side)
As I'm sure you've already surmised, you can retrieve XML data from SQL Server by using the FOR XML option of the SELECT command. FOR XML causes SELECT to return query results as an XML stream rather than a traditional rowset. On the server-side, this stream can have one of three formats: RAW, AUTO, or EXPLICIT. The ...
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